Geoimage and DigitalGlobe have announced the winner of their competition to witness the launch of DigitalGlobe’s Worldview-2 satellite from California later this year.

Entry into the competition was afforded by placing an order for either QuickBird or WorldView-1 satellite imagery from Geoimage, an Australian authorised reseller of DigitalGlobe imagery products. Gil Norrie, DigitalGlobe’s Australian representative, drew the winner of the competition on 1st May, 2009 in Sydney — Dr. Arko Lucieer from the University of Tasmania. Arko, a lecturer and researcher in Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Science, had tasked the QuickBird satellite to capture imagery over Macquarie Island. The QuickBird imagery is used for mapping and monitoring of vegetation and examining change detection on sub-Antarctic Heard and Macquarie Islands. The WorldView-2 satellite is scheduled to launch in September or early October 2009 and is the first high-resolution satellite to offer an increase in spectral diversity with the addition of four new bands (coastal, yellow, red-edge and near-infrared 2) along with the industry standard of blue, green, red and near-infrared.